I remember her from Quantum Leap, she was great.
The Most Disliked Episode of TNG, Season 4: 2021 Edition...
- Thread starter Farscape One
- Start date
There are more stinkers left here than in a locker room after a football game...
Galaxy's Child is next, despite the awkward scripting at times - another draft would have put polish on a great idea and follow-up to a previous episode. The engineering team at starfleet, reading Geordi's logs in a neat theme variation, is impressed by Geordi's tinkering over the years and things go bonkers from the start when Leah beams over and huffs'n'puffs with "her" engines and almost has to be cajoled to actually see firsthand what was done and why. (So why bother to beam on over when the logs told it all already? Because a 4x6 panel with blinking buttons is so rare and exotic?) Fleshing out more ambivalence may have helped.
The space whale stuff is borderline laughably bad, especially when the maudlin melodramatic music is cued up, but is handled just well enough - but most of it's cringe and leaves more questions, since these critters can't possibly travel faster than light yet their nourishment is so far away - so why did mommy go to the middle of nowhere to give birth? (I'm sure there's an Earth-parallel allegory that could be made to work, like the exotic girafishippo that waddles to the middle of the desert to plop out some babies before going back to its lush streamed woodland to eat and bathe) but the distance space travel involves stretches things a tad...)
It's hilarious how the computer, with the rather significant 9.37% margin of error being the cause of all this, is completely glossed over given marital status is not a classified parameter, or how Roddenberry's big vision of the future wanted so much sex everywhere that marriage would be deemed as "unevolved" as STDs were since all would be magically curable by the 2360s*, or how the computer was taking what it had "read" and gave Geordi a neck massage as a result, to which even he says it's wrong. Heck, it was actually 9.47% to ensure another "M*A*S*H easter egg, but the computer got that wrong too!
The "I make a great fungilli!"/"How did you know?!" is the one legitimately and unequivocally creepy line that also gets expounded on. Again, a polishing up draft could have rendered a lot more effective a story that means well, but isn't sure how much to make a villain out of Geordi or to make Leah out to be a villain or both.
* Lastly, is fungilli merely chili but swappin' beans for fungus? Just how badly is penicillin needed in the 24th century?
What's left:
Suddenly Human
Legacy
Final Mission
The Loss
Identity Crisis
The Host
In Theory
Redemption
Galaxy's Child is next, despite the awkward scripting at times - another draft would have put polish on a great idea and follow-up to a previous episode. The engineering team at starfleet, reading Geordi's logs in a neat theme variation, is impressed by Geordi's tinkering over the years and things go bonkers from the start when Leah beams over and huffs'n'puffs with "her" engines and almost has to be cajoled to actually see firsthand what was done and why. (So why bother to beam on over when the logs told it all already? Because a 4x6 panel with blinking buttons is so rare and exotic?) Fleshing out more ambivalence may have helped.
The space whale stuff is borderline laughably bad, especially when the maudlin melodramatic music is cued up, but is handled just well enough - but most of it's cringe and leaves more questions, since these critters can't possibly travel faster than light yet their nourishment is so far away - so why did mommy go to the middle of nowhere to give birth? (I'm sure there's an Earth-parallel allegory that could be made to work, like the exotic girafishippo that waddles to the middle of the desert to plop out some babies before going back to its lush streamed woodland to eat and bathe) but the distance space travel involves stretches things a tad...)
It's hilarious how the computer, with the rather significant 9.37% margin of error being the cause of all this, is completely glossed over given marital status is not a classified parameter, or how Roddenberry's big vision of the future wanted so much sex everywhere that marriage would be deemed as "unevolved" as STDs were since all would be magically curable by the 2360s*, or how the computer was taking what it had "read" and gave Geordi a neck massage as a result, to which even he says it's wrong. Heck, it was actually 9.47% to ensure another "M*A*S*H easter egg, but the computer got that wrong too!
The "I make a great fungilli!"/"How did you know?!" is the one legitimately and unequivocally creepy line that also gets expounded on. Again, a polishing up draft could have rendered a lot more effective a story that means well, but isn't sure how much to make a villain out of Geordi or to make Leah out to be a villain or both.
* Lastly, is fungilli merely chili but swappin' beans for fungus? Just how badly is penicillin needed in the 24th century?
What's left:
Suddenly Human
Legacy
Final Mission
The Loss
Identity Crisis
The Host
In Theory
Redemption
V
Vale
Guest
Based on the episode "Booby Trap" it's Italian. The Star Trek Cookbook (yes, really) describes it as a pasta dish with the pasta itself containing mushroom and garlic, rather than the sauce.
V
Vale
Guest
I'm going to save Redemption. It's a relatively rare beast where part one isn't as good as part two, admittedly; but the cliffhanger is jawdropping, the setup throughout is good with ramifications that last through to the end of Deep Space Nine (not to mention the end of the Enterprise-D herself), and Klingon politics were never better than in this two-parter.
What's left:
Suddenly Human
Legacy
Final Mission
The Loss
Identity Crisis
The Host
In Theory
What's left:
Suddenly Human
Legacy
Final Mission
The Loss
Identity Crisis
The Host
In Theory
Any excuse for Marina Sirtis to play a harsher character is beloved by me. It is so satisfying to watch her cut lose from the Nice Girl and just let someone have it -- "Power Play", "Man Of The People", "Face of The Enemy", and my save here, "The Loss"...
Suddenly Human
Legacy
Final Mission
Identity Crisis
The Host
In Theory
Suddenly Human
Legacy
Final Mission
Identity Crisis
The Host
In Theory
Vale beat me to it with Redemption. It's no BOBW, but it's the culmination of the Worf/Duras story, and I love how he got a big story in the season finale. Tony Todd is always awesome in whatever role he's in, and the Twilight Zone cliffhanger is a quirky one. 
Anyway. I'll save In Theory. A nice little episode regarding Data's love life. It was a fun if slight episode.
Suddenly Human
Legacy
Final Mission
Identity Crisis
The Host
Anyway. I'll save In Theory. A nice little episode regarding Data's love life. It was a fun if slight episode.
Suddenly Human
Legacy
Final Mission
Identity Crisis
The Host
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I really want to save Suddenly Human, because, aside from that annoying whining ritual, I thought it was an interesting episode (and there's that scene where Wesley gets a face full of ice cream) I also thought the actor for Jono did a good job.
....but that ending ruins it all. No matter if Jono has developed Stockholm syndrome for his kidnapper, or whether the kidnapper has come to view him as his own...that alien guy is still a freaking kidnapper! Jono is a minor and is in no position to decide for himself and the episode makes a big deal out of him discovering his human roots only to dump on it at the end. So...from a moral standpoint I can't save that episode.
So I guess I'm gonna save the Host. Yes, it has a lot of awkwardness and that line from Dr.Crusher at the end. But hey, it gave us the Trill and made them seem pretty interesting. Plus having the symbiote in Riker for a while was pretty fun.
Suddenly Human
Legacy
Final Mission
Identity Crisis
....but that ending ruins it all. No matter if Jono has developed Stockholm syndrome for his kidnapper, or whether the kidnapper has come to view him as his own...that alien guy is still a freaking kidnapper! Jono is a minor and is in no position to decide for himself and the episode makes a big deal out of him discovering his human roots only to dump on it at the end. So...from a moral standpoint I can't save that episode.
So I guess I'm gonna save the Host. Yes, it has a lot of awkwardness and that line from Dr.Crusher at the end. But hey, it gave us the Trill and made them seem pretty interesting. Plus having the symbiote in Riker for a while was pretty fun.
Suddenly Human
Legacy
Final Mission
Identity Crisis
V
Vale
Guest
Goodness me. Each of those remaining is a real beauty isn't it! Someone braver than me's going to have to go next!
I'll save Final Mission, which has some nice moments between Wesley and Picard on the planet as they await rescue. Just a shame the episode was somewhat by the numbers.
Suddenly Human
Identity Crisis
Suddenly Human
Identity Crisis
So which one's gonna win?
The One where they Romanticise Child Abduction
Or the one where Geordie turns into a Blue Men Group reject?
The One where they Romanticise Child Abduction
Or the one where Geordie turns into a Blue Men Group reject?
I was just having fun with wordplay, "fungilli"/."fungus chili"... Not sure why, but I'll concede it sounds rather good a dish..
And an entire cookbook... how many pages are devoted to Neelix?
Saving Identity Crisis because, unusually and undeservedly banal as it otherwise is, there's nothing truly cringeworthy about it. The other one is nothing but cringe for people to howl at... or mock the title with, since "Suddenly Human" sounds like a processed food kit with a bag of spice powder, overwhelming quantity of noodles that no diabetic should be within a hundred miles of, directions on how to prepare it in high altitude environments, and the phrase "Just add meat" and simmer.
I'll save "Identity Crisis" because the remaining one is just too annoying.
Suddenly Human
Suddenly Human
Wow, another person swooped in to end the game a minute before I could... but at least Identity Crisis got saved. It was worth a pass just for the scene on the holodeck. It and the Schisms one are two of my favorite uses of the holodeck.
Considering how capable holodecks are of killing their users, it's amazing that they exist on starships. Geordi's investigation shows one reason why.
Considering how capable holodecks are of killing their users, it's amazing that they exist on starships. Geordi's investigation shows one reason why.
Interesting choices. Season 4 is probably my favorite one, even the weaker episodes are worth watching in my opinion. I even like Suddenly Human to be honest.
My personal worst in S4 was Devil's Due.
"In Theory" for me. That episode sucked hard enough to propel a baseball through sixty feet of cheap garden hose.
Thanks to "Identity Crisis" I know that the invisible man casts a shadow. That's how you find him.
Thanks to "Identity Crisis" I know that the invisible man casts a shadow. That's how you find him.
There's invisible and there's camouflaged. An invisible body admits light through it. A camouflaged one reflects light in a specific configuration, but unless it can produce it's own light, it will cast a shadow.
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